The amount of information that is currently available to search engines is enormous. Given the quantity of information available, it is critical to provide users tools that make finding the right information as quick and easy as possible. Consequently, many techniques have been developed for improving the speed and quality of the searching experience.
One such technique for making the search experience faster and easier is referred to as “instant search”. In the context of search assistant systems, “instant search” refers to the technique of showing a search result page to a user even before the user completes entering the search query in a search box.
The usefulness of instant search hinges greatly on whether the search assistant system starts to provide search result pages too early or too late in the user's query formulation. Specifically, if instant search does not start providing search result pages until the user has nearly finished formulating the user's entire search query, then instant search does not save the user much time or effort. On the other hand, providing search result pages too early and too often in the query formulation process consumes screen space, consumes client-side processing power, and is distracting or annoying, without providing any significant benefit. The too-early search result pages provide little benefit because the too-early pages are unlikely to contain results that relate to the searcher's actual interests.
Thus, it is desirable to provide techniques for initiating instant search as soon as, but not before, the search results are likely to be of interest to the user of the search assistant system.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.